Today is 13th of January. We continue to publish a text about Fatima by Fr Karl Stehlin. Today we propose Father’s commentary about “The Refusal of the Consecration of Russia”.

COMMENTARY

The consecration of Russia seemed to have touched the hearts of the Popes in spite of their critical attitude towards Sr. Lucia’s writings. They made immense efforts to pretend that they had accomplished the wishes of Our Lady despite the clear objective evidence that the conditions have simply not been fulfilled. Why then accomplish such an act and at the same time refuse to fulfil the conditions? Because the conditions in themselves are inadmissible for those who adhere to the “Spirit of the Council”; they are a thorn in their side; they are against their principles.

a) Concrete analysis of the requirements and why they are refused

1. Since the Second Vatican Council, the real power in the Church seems to be the Bishops’ Conferences. To our knowledge there is no example of a Pope who has ignored or short circuited the Bishops’ Conferences. Now, the first condition for the consecration of Russia is an act of supreme authority, an order that emphasizes the universal monarchic power of the Pope. It goes directly against the principle of Collegialism which was officially established as the model of the governance of the Church since Vatican II. To accomplish this request would mean a clear return to the traditional monarchic understanding of the Church as established by Our Lord himself, and defined as a Dogma of the Faith by the First Vatican Council.

2. The Popes after Vatican II generally avoid the term “consecration” and replace it with “entrustment”, because a total surrender of oneself to Mary is considered to be an exaggeration of her role in our life. It is also against the ecumenical way which strives to diminish the difference between Catholicism and Protestantism, as for the latter, the spiritual motherhood and the royal power of Mary are impossible to accept.

3. The consecration of Russia with the clear goal to eliminate the “errors of Russia” and its “godless propaganda” does not harmonize with the pacifist mentality of the Second Vatican Council, wherein the notion of the Church on earth as a Militant Church has been practically abolished, and Catholic Life is no longer considered as a continuous spiritual fight against errors and sin, but as a ‘positive striving of giving witness’ and as a keeping an open mind for dialogue and tolerance. Furthermore, we have seen in Volume II that the deeper reason for the consecration of Russia is not only to overcome the Marxist “errors of Russia”, but also the conversion of Russia from schism to the Catholic Faith, which is also a deadly blow against Ecumenism. Therefore, whenever there is an allusion to Russia in the post-conciliar ‘consecrations’, the idea of conversion is radically suppressed.

4. In none of the consecrations do we find the public act of Reparation requested so many times by Our Lady. The act of Reparation belongs to the very essence of the devotion to her Immaculate Heart. Now, the idea of reparation recalls eternal damnation as a terrible consequence of sin and the importance of penance and conversion to avoid the fires of Hell. Today, sin is conceived only in terms of being an offense against oneself or against one’s neighbor. The notion of the rights of God, the fact that those rights are offended by sin, and the need to make reparation for the offenses, are all completely lost from sight today.

If a Pope fulfils all the requirements of Our Lady, he practically abandons the whole post-conciliar orientation as a false road.

b) Insufficient consecrations

Two aspects have to be considered in these consecrations: in the measure that they come close to the demands of Our Lady, graces are given to the world. This is particularly visible with the Act of Consecration of the World by Pius XII. From this we see how generously heaven answers even an insufficient and imperfect Act on our part.

Often the argument has been given that, in the present circumstances, it would not be prudent to make the “consecration of Russia”, because this would provoke the anger of that nation and so increase the discrimination and persecutions against Christians there. In his Spiritual Exercises, Saint Ignatius of Loyola speaks about those faithful who want to fulfil the will of God, but who find excuses and arguments to make a compromise: a little bit of the will of God, but also their own will. As a result they will do “something”, but not precisely what God really wants. In the end, they effectively do very little or nothing for the Kingdom of God and their salvation.

We would have to apply the statement of Saint Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort to those who purposely want to use these consecrations to make the people believe that the will of Heaven had been fully accomplished.He says that such people spread a false devotion to Our Lady amongst the people and refers to them as hypocritical devotees, who want “to appear to their fellow-man different from what they are”.

c) The lie

In the context of the consecration of Russia, the Roman authorities go further than the above-mentioned ambiguities, tendentious selections of texts, and manipulation of people and events. Their opposition to Fatima extends so far as to have recourse to the immorality of a double lie: the statement that, according to Sr. Lucia “The consecration is done according to the will of Heaven”, and the presentation of fake letters as writings of Sr. Lucia. The statement puts Sr. Lucia in flagrant contradiction with herself, as, up to 1989, she always and in all circumstances repeated the above-mentioned conditions as essential for the validity of this consecration. Then, suddenly, in 1989, she supposedly considers the consecrations as fully accomplished, though their failure to fulfil the conditions remained exactly the same. In other words, the statement implicitly accuses Sr. Lucia of being either a notorious liar or a mentally disordered person. Furthermore, from the last above mentioned arguments (8–11) we can conclude, that the quoted letter cannot be authentic. Such a use of letters to prove one’s theory need not be examined, as both from the historical and the moral point of view such procedures disqualify themselves entirely.

The question that faces us is the following: How can the highest representatives from the ‘seat of truth’ reduce themselves to using such duplicitous means?

We must not judge them, but we have to ask ourselves with anxiety what Our Lady wants to teach us through such pitiful moral conflict. Once you enter into the system of the enemy, the day comes when “the father of lies” reveals himself. In other words, once you renounce the sincere seeking of objective truth and trust only in your own intelligence, you fall more and more into blindness. The first moral principle to be overthrown is “the end can never justify the means”! Even if you have a good goal to achieve, you are never allowed to use immoral means to obtain your goal. Even if the modernists are convinced that Fatima is an illusion and that many of Sr. Lucia’s statements are not true, they nonetheless do not have the right to use immoral means to achieve their goals.

Another thing is that lies always bring you into contradiction. This is very visible here: If they think that Lucia is a victim of her illusions and ‘visions’ throughout, and all that she said is to be “handled with care and not taken literally”, including this consecration, why then not say so frankly and honestly, instead of covering the whole issue with lies? They cannot say it, because of the innumerable historical facts and the marvellous effects of Fatima, and because they would scandalize the whole Catholic world. What cannot be eliminated has to be definitively silenced. How? By declaring that now “all is accomplished and the Fatima event belongs to the past”.

Is not the definition of modernism the idea that the past belongs to the past, and especially that Tradition belongs to the past and no longer has anything more to do with our times nor with the future? In conclusion, the whole story of the “consecration of Russia” is like a mirror in which we can detect a pattern of modernism and the way it works. This sad aspect of the history of Fatima is also a revelation by Our Lady, in that it shows her children what they should avoid at all costs. And the easiest way not to fall into such traps is to be faithful to her.

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